Supreme Court Endorses Abusive Anti-LGBTQ+ Treatment for Minors

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 31, 2026 – Today the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Chiles v. Salazar, ruling 8–1 against Colorado’s ban on the dangerous and discredited practice of anti-LGBTQ “conversion therapy” for minors. These attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, purporting to stop them from being LGBTQ+, have repeatedly been found to not only not work but indeed to cause long lasting and deep harm. That includes the shame and humiliation associated with even talk therapy that attempts to change identity, which is why half the states and countless more cities have restricted therapists from offering it.

Though free speech is subject to many restrictions to prevent harm, this Supreme Court does not believe LGBTQ+ minors should be similarly protected from harmful shame-based therapies that futilely try to force them into being straight and cisgender. The majority sees Colorado’s law as “discriminating on the basis of viewpoint,” asserting that “the best means for finding truth” is to allow every American to say whatever they want in “the free marketplace of ideas,” even licensed therapists knowingly harming their clients. They justify this by pointing out that it wasn’t that long ago that homosexuality was considered a mental illness and “medical consensus is not static,” thus the “fierce public debate” about how to help LGBTQ+ minors must not be interfered with by the law.

Liberal Justices Kagan and Sotomayor, concurring with the majority, offer little comfort. They borrow the conservative justices’ worst habit of inventing bizarre hypothetical strawmen — in this case, a law barring therapy that affirms LGBTQ+ minors. Like their conservative colleagues, they ignore the context of harm in a clinical, professional setting.

Only Justice Jackson prioritizes this harm in her dissent. She highlights the stories of trauma the Court heard from survivors of conversion therapy and notes the way it stigmatizes patients and sets them up to fail. She is likewise the only justice to point out that the therapist in this case wants to flout the medical standards and state licensing requirements established by this law so she can impose this harm. Therapeutic speech is different than everyday speech and must be treated as such.

Alliance for Justice President Rachel Rossi issued the following statement:

“Today’s decision is yet another harmful setback for the LGBTQ+ community and for the health care of everybody. As in its 2018 case about crisis pregnancy centers’ anti-abortion propaganda, the Court reasserts its view that speech must be so ‘free’ that medical professionals can lie to their clients — even when it’s harmful and conflicts with best practices for professional care. This flies in the face of well-established precedent recognizing a valid interest in regulating speech that endangers others. The validity of LGBTQ+ identities is not open to debate, nor is the inevitable trauma many children will experience without the protection of laws like Colorado’s. We deserve justices who care about the context of harm and the importance of laws that protect us from it.”